Pontllanfraith teen wants to help others fight anorexia

LUCY Hemms knows her battle against anorexia nervosa is far from over – but she has come a long way from the days when she was consuming just 200 calories a day, one-tenth of what she should have been eating.

Only a few months ago the Pontllanfraith teen faced the prospect of going into hospital for treatment.

She managed to avoid that, and now she is telling her story in the hope that others in her position will be encouraged to seek help.

The teenager is also backing calls for a child and adolescent eating disorder service for Wales to be funded to the same degree as that for adults.

The adult service currently receives £1 million a year funding, but under-18s are treated through existing CAMHS(children and adolescent mental health services).

Earlier this week a petition was handed in at the Senedd, calling for parity in funding, with campaigners arguing that eating disorders, particularly anorexia nervosa, are very often experienced first in early teenage years.

“I think it’s just as important, if not more important, to support children and adolescents, because if they have not fully developed into an adult the effects of an eating disorder on their body could influence their whole lives,”

said Miss Hemms.

The 18-year-old has been studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and is at Coleg Gwent’s Cross Keys campus, where she is studying for a diploma in music.

She won Caerphilly county borough’s Young Singer of the Year in 2010, has been a guest artist with Mynyddislwyn Male Voice Choir on numerous occasions, and performed at Ponty in the Park in 2010.

These achievements are all the more remarkable because Miss Hemms, from Highfield Road, Pontllanfraith, has lived in the shadowof anorexia nervosa for much of the last three years.

Aged 15, she lost more than three stones by going to Slimming World, and was commended for losing weight in a healthy way.

However, she then continued to lose weight on her own initiative, cutting her food intake at one stage to 200 calories a day, her weight falling to 7st 12lb.

“I was weighing myself three times a day,” said Miss Hemms, who is 5ft 10in tall.

“I was eating just 200 calories for about a year. My skin was bad and I got arthritis in my ankles, which I still have.

“My hair fell out and I had to wear a wig for a long time.

That was the last thing that started happening. “My mum’s a hairdresser and learned how to put hair extensions in, but that wasn’t possible because I had too little hair.”

Miss Hemms has an ambition to have a career as a singer, and admires Katherine Jenkins. But her voice has suffered and she reached the stage where she was forgetting the words to songs she had known for years.

“I sang at St Fagan’s Church in a choir and I was ill when I did it,” she said. “People were saying I looked terrible, but when I looked in the mirror I still thought I was fat.”

She visited pro-anorexia websites, but finally talked to her family and was surprised to hear her aunt had battled an eating disorder.

“Knowing that helped me to get helpmyself. I knowit will always be there for me.

I know it can come back, but for some people it does not,” she said.

Surviving on a pitiful 200 calories per day

WHEN Miss Hemms looks back at photographs she realises how poorly she looked.

Her 200-calories-a-day intake was pitifully low, the food intake being equivalent to just one of the following selections:

Two bananas; a bowl of All Bran with 125 millilitres of semi-skimmed milk; one slice of toast with Nutella; a 400-gram can of chicken and mushroom soup; five Rich Tea biscuits; a bowl of porridge with skimmed milk.

“In January this year I went to get help, but had to wait for four months before I was given any treatment. When I got it, it was great. I was given anti-depressants, which were a big help.”

Avoiding hospital, she was prescribed Ensure, a liquid containing the nutrients of a full meal, and which is given to elderly people who are malnourished.

After counselling, she is becoming healthier and learning to cope with her disorder. She has been banned from weighing herself. “I am happy at the moment,” said Miss Hemms. But she says she will always have the problem in the back of her mind.

She believes media images pressurise young women to be as thin as the models portrayed, and that this is unhealthy.

The charity Beat offers help to anyone – sufferers, carers, professionals and others – needing support and information relating to an eating disorder.

It has an adult helpline on 0845 634 1414, open Monday-Friday,10.30am- 8.30pm, Saturdays, 1pm-4.30pm, e-mail help@b-eat.co.uk

There is also a helpline for under-25s on 0845 634 7650.

This offers a call-back service, and is open Monday-Friday, 4.30pm-8.30pm, Saturdays, 1pm-4.30pm.

This line also offers a text service on 07786 20 18 20.

There is also a youthline e-mail service at fyp@b-eat.co.uk For more information go to www.b-eat.co.uk

Help on offer for eating disorders

CLOSE to 5,000 people in Wales are estimated to have a clinically significant eating disorder, with almost 900 of these being in Gwent.

The adult service set up in Wales two years ago, under the Welsh Government’s Eating Disorders Framework, operates on a four-tier basis.

Tier one is eating disorder services provided through primary care, and tier two through specialist eating disorder staff in community mental health services.

Both can refer patients to tier-three specialist eating disorder services, which can in turn refer to tertiary care for especially complex cases.

EDITORIAL COMMENT: Protect our youngsters

TO LOOK at Lucy Hemms today it is hard to believe she has such a harrowing tale to tell.

And the teenager is to be commended for speaking out about a condition which at one stage left her eating just 200 calories a day and facing hospitalisation.

For Lucy was one of the hundreds of people diagnosed with anorexia, or another eating disorder, every year in Wales.

Her case highlights an illness caused in part we believe by the flow of images of stick thin models and by a national media obsessed with celebrities, who are praised for being as thin as possible even just weeks after giving birth, but who are rounded on the moment they put on a little weight.

A ridiculous state of affairs, which is often condemned but never seems to change.

But Lucy’s case also highlights a wider problem in Wales and that is in how we treat those with an illness which often starts when girls – and it is mainly girls – are at their most vulnerable to such pressures, as young teenagers.

For sufferers aged 18 and over there is access to specialist services.

For those any younger there is not – as was highlighted in a petition submitted to the Assembly earlier this week. This seems to us to be illogical.

Specialist care is vital if these illnesses are to be treated successfully.